Introduction to RightFax

What is Digital Fax?

Many organizations rely on automated document delivery workflow strategies to securely exchange and process information to and from their customers.

A key element to the automation of document delivery is the process of how that information is exchanged. Digital faxing technology is largely adopted by organizations who are looking to replace paper-based processes to improve information agility, employee productivity, and achieve higher levels of compliance with state and federal agencies.

Why is Digital Fax Important?

Not all faxing systems are the same. Organizations that rely on fax need to ensure that their document delivery workflows are processed in a timely manner. That is why overall system architecture is important when considering fax server options.

Enterprise-grade fax server solutions can maintain an extremely high degree of system reliability with numerous built-in fail-safes that ultimately protect faxes from being lost, delayed or accidentally deleted. With a digital fax solution, your organization can:

• Integrate fax documents with the business applications that are most important to your business, making it easier to exchange information more quickly
• Turn static, paper documents into dynamic, smart content as part of an electronic workflow
• Shorten business cycles by delivering quotes, invoices, and purchase orders automatically and instantly
• Eliminate the cost of fax machines, paper, toner, analog phone lines, and the frustrations that go along with them
• Maintain compliance with regulations around the world to keep protected information private

Transforming paper-based processes into automated document delivery workflows provides benefits across the entire organization by increasing the efficiency and productivity of anyone who touches a faxed document.

What is RightFax?

As the most flexible and configurable fax server available, OpenText RightFax provides robust configurability and flexible automation capabilities that make it the most trusted and reliable choice for organizations to support their digital transformation strategy.

The RightFax Basics

RightFax Fax Server Editions

RightFax has several flexible fax server options to centralize electronic document delivery workflows, including:

RightFax Enterprise Integration Server

The RightFax Enterprise Integration Server is the same as the Enterprise Suite but includes the integration modules which transform RightFax into an automated outbound fax solution. This includes integration with legacy systems and current applications.

 RightFax Enterprise Suite

Offers the same enterprise functionality and capabilities as Enterprise Server but includes even more add-on modules as a bundle.

Designed for enterprise organizations which require enterprise-grade capabilities across the entire organization. Multiple enterprise fax servers work together to provide a network that integrates with the unique systems of your large business. RightFax Enterprise Server supports extremely high fax volumes, advanced integrations and additional add-on modules for expanded capabilities.


Channels

RightFax Channels are licensed document delivery channels which represent the number of concurrent documents that can be transmitted at any given time. Regardless of the size of your fax needs, RightFax has a solution to meet the capacity your business needs to send and receive fax documents.

Gateways

Analog and digital media gateways allow customers to configure and deploy reliable, secure boardless, IP-based fax server systems; suitable for both the small to mid-size businesses and Enterprise organizations and compatible with a variety of popular PBX manufacturers including Cisco, Alcatel, Avaya, Ericsson, Fujitsu, Mitel, NEC, Nortel, and Siemens.

Client Software

The client-side component of the fax server, including dedicated enterprise administration software, fax client software, web-based user tools or utilities designed to appear as a local printer on the network, including:

FaxUtil
A comprehensive desktop application for users of OpenText RightFax. Within RightFax FaxUtil, users can create, view, edit, and print faxes, along with a number of other useful features for managing fax traffic.

FaxUtilWeb
A web-based client that allows for a reduction of the required effort to support RightFax on hundreds or sometimes thousands of desktops.

Enterprise Fax Manager
A windows-based client application with which administrators manage RightFax servers, including items such as users, groups, printers, cover sheets, and the general functions of the fax system.

Telephony

RightFax can interface with telephony systems via hardware-based intelligent fax boards (IFBs) or software-based fax over IP (FoIP) middleware. A RightFax server can have dedicated transport services that run in the background as an interface between the RightFax and your telephony equipment.

Deployment Options

RightFax has four main deployment options available depending on the needs of your organization. Each model has its own unique characteristics – whether those characteristics are strengths or weaknesses will depend upon your requirements for functionality, the availability of IT staff, related costs and how critical fax is to your business.

RightFax Fax Server (On-Premise)

This 100% on-premises deployment installs RightFax on an on-premises server and uses on-premises telephony for electronic faxing. RightFax can connect with virtually any type of telephone network: analog lines (POTS/DID), digital lines (T1, E1, PRI, BRI), and VoIP.

The key strength of on-premises solutions is the ability to integrate with existing software applications and multi-function printers (MFPs). Advanced on-premises solutions support configurations for high availability – including virtualization and redundancy. One option with on-premises solutions is a fax appliance that includes the necessary hardware (server, network and telephone connections) and fax server software in an “all-in-one” plug-and-play configuration.

RightFax Connect (Hybrid)

This is a hybrid option where RightFax is installed on-premises and uses RightFax Connect (cloud service) to send and receive faxes. This removes the burden of connecting RightFax to your telephone network. RightFax Connect is the only cloud-based transmission built by the experts at OpenText to work with RightFax software. With virtually unlimited capacity, it handles spikes and peaks in volume with no fax traffic congestion. Since this option does not require fax channels, remove the capacity limitations of RightFax fax channels by using the cloud for fax transmission.

The key strength of hybrid solutions is that the service portion typically includes the connection to the telephone network–often the most complex and confusing part of deploying fax solutions–taking this responsibility away from your IT and telecommunications staff. Because the software is residing on-premises, integration with MFPs and other software applications is the same as an on-premise solution. For organizations with disaster recovery strategies, RightFax Connect can simplify your process because no matter where your RightFax server is located, you can connect to the server and your inbound numbers will point to you.

Fax2Mail (Cloud)

Fax2Mail has been a leading provider of outsourced messaging services for over two decades. The Fax2Mail fax service allows you to send, receive, save, and forward faxes from an email client, BlackBerry, desktop, laptop, PDA, or smartphone. For a low monthly cost, the fax service can be used from any place that has an internet or wireless connection—no servers or software required.

The key strength of this solution is that it can help reduce costs by eliminating the need for fax machines, servers, telephony infrastructure as well as the IT resources necessary to maintain these technologies. However, a total cloud solution may limit your ability to integrate with applications, MFPs, active directory, and the ability to deliver inbound faxes to network folders.

Hosted (Managed)

This managed fax solution option moves RightFax from an on-premises deployment to a location managed and hosted by your cloud provider (AWS, Google, Azure, etc.). The software and feature set remain the same, but this option removes the complexity of managing and maintaining an on-premises deployment.

The key strength of this solution is that the IT infrastructure is managed by the service provider in their data centers, while keeping your data isolated and protected.

Conclusion

With over 25 years of supporting fax and document exchange for mid-sized to large enterprises, RightFax can strengthen and accelerate enterprise initiatives while providing electronic faxing across the entire organization. When you need to integrate fax with applications that control your business processes, RightFax is the fax server that gets the job done to accelerate the speed at which you do business.

In our next chapter, we’ll dive into RightFax and telephony for an in-depth view of what telephony is and how you can determine your long-term telephony needs.